Monday, December 14, 2015

Donald Trump
says he’ll succeed as President because he has succeeded in business,
so it’s appropriate to scour his business record. One area in particular
that deserves scrutiny is his business relationship with companies
controlled by the Mafia.
The reporting on this has so far been
scanty, and we have no new revelations. But Mr. Trump was active in
construction in the 1980s, when federal racketeering cases highlighted
the influence that a “club” of mobsters exerted over large construction
projects in New York City. In one 1988 trial, Anthony “Fat Tony”
Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, was among those convicted
in a scheme to control and profit from the concrete contracts for
numerous buildings in Manhattan, including Trump Plaza.
We asked
Mr. Trump about these ties on his recent visit to the Journal, and his
answers are worth hearing at length. Mr. Trump recalled that in
Manhattan there were perhaps three concrete companies and “virtually
every building that was built was built with these companies.” He added
that “a lot—all of these people—were somehow associated, according to
what I read, I don’t know it for a fact.”
Since the Mafia is in
the business of stealing, we figured Mr. Trump would be angry that he
had to build a “mob tax” into the cost of his projects. But he seemed to
be a satisfied customer.
In his stream-of-consciousness way,
Mr. Trump described the concrete companies of that era: “You know, Wall
Street Journal didn’t write about these guys but these guys were
excellent contractors. They were phenomenal. They could do three floors a
week in concrete. Nobody else in the world could do three floors a
week. I mean they were unbelievable. Trump Tower, other buildings. They
would do literally—and you’d say how can you do three? They’d set it,
pour it; before the concrete was even dry, they would be putting forms
on the floor working off the steel beams, okay?”
He added that
“they were unbelievably good contractors in terms of doing the work. But
a lot of them were supposedly associated with the mob.” Did he realize
at the time that he was, for example, working with a company largely
controlled by Salerno? “No, nobody would know that,” said Mr. Trump.
He
recalled that after the bust following the 1980s real-estate boom, many
contractors “tended to be not around so much after that. Then a lot of
them got indicted I think by [former New York County District Attorney
Robert] Morgenthau, who was a great D.A., fantastic guy, fantastic, but
he indicted a lot of people. I don’t know in concrete, but a lot of
people were indicted. And then they started sort of disappearing.
Actually it’s a much different world today. But if you built a building
in New York, you basically were, unless you didn’t want to build it, you
basically had to use one of the two or three companies that were there,
for the concrete structure mostly.”
Atlantic City brought more
transactions with wise guys. The Washington Post recently reported that
Mr. Trump’s casino license was delayed as he was developing the Trump
Plaza Hotel and Casino in part because of ties to reputed Scarfo crime
family associate Kenny Shapiro.
Asked about a July CNN report suggesting Mr. Trump had overpaid for a parcel of Atlantic City land from Philadelphia mobster Salvatore Testa,
Mr. Trump said, “I don’t know who Testa is.” CNN reported that the
transaction occurred in 1982. That was a long time ago—and two years
before Testa was found shot to death.
What about the contractors
in south Jersey? “You had contractors that were supposedly mob-oriented
all over Atlantic City,” Mr. Trump said, adding that “every single
casino company used the same companies, just I hope you will say that.”
Mr. Trump said that “unlike the ones I told you about in New York, they
had some lousy contractors. But basically when you’re in Atlantic City,
you’re using all of the contractors, you bid them out. Some of them may
have been mob-oriented, I don’t know.”
But if Mr. Trump didn’t
know whether his associates had mob ties, why did he warn others not to
get involved in casino gambling lest they attract organized crime? Mr.
Trump now says he was merely trying to discourage potential competitors
from entering the casino business: “I’d say negative about it because I
didn’t want to have other jurisdictions do gambling. That’s sort of,
like, you know, basic business sense.” So he says he warned about mob
influence to deter competitors while claiming lack of knowledge about
mob ties to his own projects.
Mr. Trump has never been accused of
a crime, and his see-no-evil, he-had-no-choice explanation worked for
him as a businessman. The question is whether this is adequate for
someone who wants to be President.
The question is especially apt for GOP primary voters because Democrats would surely raise it in the general election. Mitt Romney
lost in 2012 in part because Democrats trashed his stellar business
record in private equity. Better to vet Mr. Trump’s business record now
than next October.